Our first 100: Building REA Cyber City one person at a time

Recently, we welcomed our 100th permanent team member at REA Cyber City. On paper, it is a headcount milestone; but also an opportunity to pause, look back and remember how all of this began.

We often go back to the Monday morning in 2024, standing in the lobby and welcoming Rishi and Nihal as employees number one and two.

There were photos, of course. A walk around a still-new floor, introducing them to REA, to our teams, to the products and problems they would soon be working on. We shared our very first lunch together as a Cyber City team.

Those simple, human moments made everything feel real, and reminded us what a humbling privilege it is to help start something from scratch at this scale

The 18 months before “Day One”

Those first happy moments with Rishi and Nihal sat on the shoulders of 18 months of work that most people will never see.

Before we ever put names on desks, we were shaping the vision for Cyber City:

What kind of hub did we want this to be for REA?
How would our squads be structured?
How could ways of working reflect REA’s culture and values while giving this new centre its own identity?
Where could REA Cyber City create real, long‑term value for our business and be a great place to build a career?

We sketched, debated and refined everything from squad design and ownership to how work would be shared amongst our REA locations. It was equal parts organisation design, culture design and future‑back thinking.

The week before Day One is still vivid for many of us.

We transformed a dusty concrete shell into something that felt like REA. Furniture arrived. Meeting rooms were wired up and tested. Video conferencing came online so our teams could see and hear each other clearly across time zones. Our values went up on the walls, turning it from “an office” into “our office”.

One evening, the team gathered to pack welcome kits for every new Cyber Citizen joining us. It was a small ritual, but a powerful one. It made all the planning, design and spreadsheets feel tangible. We were no longer talking about a future centre. We were preparing to welcome real people into it.

The work behind the scenes is always about people

A lot of what we do at Cyber City happens behind the scenes, but it is deeply people‑centric.

As a collective, we focus on:

Designing how our squads are put together and how they work, empowering them with clear purpose, autonomy and a strong sense of ownership.
Holding ourselves accountable for gender diversity and balanced teams from day one, not as an afterthought.
Partnering with Thoughtworks and ANSR to build and continually improve the systems and processes that support hiring, onboarding and delivery.
Collaborating with business unit leaders in Australia to focus Cyber City where it can create the most value for REA.

At the heart of all of this is a simple aim: to make Cyber City a place where people can grow their craft and careers while delivering meaningful outcomes for our customers and business.

What it feels like inside the hub

Walk the floor on any given day and you’ll find a vibrant, diverse, passionate group of engineers, product folks and leaders.

The office has a particular kind of energy — the buzz of people who care about engineering excellence, who are proud of what they ship, and who are genuinely interested in learning from each other.

Day to day, that shows up in how our squads own their work:

They have a clear understanding of the problems they are solving and why those problems matter.
They have real autonomy in how they deliver, with the freedom to experiment and improve.
They are constantly building mastery in their craft, whether that is in platforms, data, security, product or experience.

Put those elements together, and you get more than a delivery centre. You get a community.

Building with intention: Gender diversity from day one

From our earliest conversations, we were aligned on the kind of teams we wanted to build: balanced squads where different perspectives are expected and necessary – not a nice-to-have.

From the outset we established strict goals for gender balance and stayed committed, even when it meant taking a little more time.
Our leaders at REA backed that intent, understanding that the long‑term benefits of an industry‑leading gender mix far outweigh the short‑term speed of filling seats.

Today, Cyber City has more than 40% representation of women in the team, programmes like Vapasi are embedded in our talent strategy, and we enjoy balanced squads that collaborate, learn and grow together.

This is not just a statistic. You can feel it in the way conversations happen in meeting rooms, in the perspectives shared during design reviews, and in the role models visible to early‑career technologists walking in for the first time.

Vapasi and holding up “half the sky”

One of the highlights of the past year has been the launch of our Vapasi (“return”) programme with Thoughtworks.

Through Vapasi, we welcomed 10 women returning to tech after extended career breaks, into our Cyber City community. Meeting them, hearing their stories and their reasons for coming back to tech, has been a powerful reminder of why this work matters.

There is a saying in China that “women hold up half the sky”, recognising that women and men share equal responsibility, strength and value in society. That sentiment resonates deeply with what we want our squads and communities at REA to reflect.

Cyber City is one of the clearest examples of this in action: a hub where diversity is not only visible in the numbers, but embedded in the way teams are built, supported and celebrated.

Gratitude for the first 100 — and the many more to come

Reaching 100 permanent team members is not the end of a chapter. It is the start of a new one.

We would not be here without the people and partners who believed in this vision and did the hard work to bring it to life:

The team members who have organised and run hundreds of interviews over the last 18 months to find the very best people for Cyber City.
Our talent acquisition colleagues who designed the interview processes, selection frameworks and pipelines that make fair, high‑quality hiring possible at scale.
Every single person who chose to join us in Cyber City — from Rishi and Nihal on that first day to our 100th team member, Riya Mittal, and everyone who has joined in between.

You are the ones turning a vision on paper into a living, breathing community that delivers value every day.

As we look ahead to the next 100, the focus is clear: deepen capability, strengthen culture, deliver meaningful outcomes and continue to cultivate amazing people.

We have come a long way in a short time. And, in true REA fashion, we are only just getting started.

REA Group Ltd ACN 068 349 066 (ASX:REA) (“REA Group”) is a multinational digital advertising business specialising in property. REA Group operates Australia’s leading residential and commercial property websites – realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au – as well as the leading website dedicated to share property, Flatmates.com.au and property research website, property.com.au.